Why are balloons terribly exciting for kids and terribly "meh" for adults? And when does the change in attitude occur? Theatre Nuevo asks the tough questions about balloon frivolity, especially as they relate to our conception of adulthood and its origins in its new group-devised piece, This Is Not Funny. Using recreations of actual newscasts and a Vaudeville-type framework, Theatre Nuevo... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

Fashions in art, like fashions in anything, are fickle -- so it's usually best to pay them no mind. For instance, in John Constable's lifetime he was openly ridiculed for the perceived aesthetic faux pas of painting humble rural scenes. A similar dismal misapprehension of real talent befell Thomas Cole, titan of unrepentant landscape studies and the founder of the Hudson River School. Thomas... Read more about this event >>

Cole Porter's delirious musical Anything Goes takes a young heiress trapped in an engagement of convenience, a lovestruck young stockbroker, a second-rate criminal and his moll and an English nobleman, and throws them all on an ocean liner heading to England. There's also a reformed revivalist who now works as a nightclub singer, and she gets into as much trouble as the rest of them.... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

St. Louis Actors' Studio's LaBute New Theater Festival is well on its way to becoming an eagerly awaited summer tradition. Playwright Neil LaBute and a circle of readers select a large handful of fresh one-acts submitted by both professional and high school playwrights. The winning entrants are presented in fully staged productions at the Gaslight Theater (358 North Boyle Avenue; 314-458-2978... Read more about this event >>

If the woman in the film Face in the Crowd looks uncannily like Elizabeth Banks, you're not losing your mind. Video artist Alex Prager often recruits professional actors for her projects, and that is indeed Banks dressed in 1950s garb and wading into a crowd of people. The eleven minute long, single-channel film begins with Banks watching a thick crowd of people from her window, and then... Read more about this event >>

What do you get when four Canadians and one founding member of Sonic Youth collaborate? Not your average cuppa tea. Instead, you take a long, cool drink of something from the Dadaist bottle via the art film Une Danse des Bouffons. Directed by Canadian-born Marcel Dzama, it stars Kim Gordon, who not only played bass in Sonic Youth forever but is also a respected visual artist in her own right.... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

The creative staff at the Muny take their responsibilities as stewards for the future of theater in St. Louis seriously -- the "family show" in every year's schedule is proof of that. This year's show for the kids is the always-popular Disney's Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1991 animated film. The music by Alan Menken and Tim Rice is beloved by children, so you already know your kids... Read more about this event >>

World War II wasn't an off-to-the-margins conflict that affected primarily young working-class men and women. This blowup was colossal. Besides the terror of actual combat, there were hours of stultifying, anxious downtime. What to do with all those empty hours in the pre-TV, pre-Internet age? The soldier's friend, chess, filled the need. A new exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame (4652... Read more about this event >>

Buckle your experiential seat belt, slick back your hair, turn off that cell and get your hot sweaty self ready for a different kind of big top. The Universoul Circus hits St. Louis with a bang this week. This isn't your granddad's circus; rather, Universoul bills itself as the most interactive circus in the world, incorporating circus arts, theater and music to provide a thrilling new hybrid... Read more about this event >>

The Saint Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072 or www.slam.org) celebrates the rich artistic heritage of West Africa with Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa, a new retrospective featuring more than 170 works of art on loan from museums and private collections from around the world. This first contemporary exhibition of Senufo artwork in North America explores how the figures, masks and... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

To walk into the Hideaway is to enter a place that seems frozen in time, where the dozen or so seats around the piano are packed with your grandparents' friends, decked out in chunky jewelry and tilted fedora hats. Ostensibly, they're here to listen to Mark Dew play — he's here Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights — but you're just as likely to hear one of those... Read more about this event >>

Henrik Ibsen's classic drama Hedda Gabler ends with its heroine shooting herself. Jeff Whitty's The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler picks up immediately after the fatal gunshot. Hedda wakes up, and discovers she's doomed to exist eternally only as a tragic literary figure. Fortunately, she's not alone. Mammy, the black stereotype of a domestic servant created during Hollywood's golden age,... Read more about this event >>

8 p.m. Monday, August 3. Old Rock House, 1200 South Seventh Street. $8 to $10. 314-588-0505.
Cast your mind back two years: Madisen Ward and the Mama Bear played to a handful of folks on the top of the City Museum at KDHX's annual Midwest Mayhem bash. Perhaps the mother and son duo knew what was to come: a record deal with Glassnote, major festival slots and world tours. But they didn't... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

The creative staff at the Muny take their responsibilities as stewards for the future of theater in St. Louis seriously -- the "family show" in every year's schedule is proof of that. This year's show for the kids is the always-popular Disney's Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1991 animated film. The music by Alan Menken and Tim Rice is beloved by children, so you already know your kids... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

In 1989, following the incredible success of the Dragon Ball manga and anime, series creator Akira Toriyama chose to title the sequel series Dragon Ball Z. Fearing that he was running out of ideas, Toriyama added the last letter of the alphabet to signify that the end was near. But more than a quarter of a century later, the Dragon Ball saga still shows no signs of slowing down. And how could... Read more about this event >>

If the woman in the film Face in the Crowd looks uncannily like Elizabeth Banks, you're not losing your mind. Video artist Alex Prager often recruits professional actors for her projects, and that is indeed Banks dressed in 1950s garb and wading into a crowd of people. The eleven minute long, single-channel film begins with Banks watching a thick crowd of people from her window, and then... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

From the 2013 RFT Music awards: DJ Mahf works from some place in his brain that pumps out enough enthusiasm to make his work look easy. Performing with a chilled zeal, the Indyground DJ interplays dense minutes of thumping samples with crackling movie clips and fine-tuned, one-and-two-handed scratches. He has already banged around Kansas City's spirited Middle of the Map Festival with... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

The creative staff at the Muny take their responsibilities as stewards for the future of theater in St. Louis seriously -- the "family show" in every year's schedule is proof of that. This year's show for the kids is the always-popular Disney's Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1991 animated film. The music by Alan Menken and Tim Rice is beloved by children, so you already know your kids... Read more about this event >>

World War II wasn't an off-to-the-margins conflict that affected primarily young working-class men and women. This blowup was colossal. Besides the terror of actual combat, there were hours of stultifying, anxious downtime. What to do with all those empty hours in the pre-TV, pre-Internet age? The soldier's friend, chess, filled the need. A new exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame (4652... Read more about this event >>

The camera may have democratized photography by bringing the power of portraiture to the people, but because of America's troubling racial history there are comparatively few historical photographs of minorities. But that doesn't mean they're not out there -- artist Robert E. Green seeks them out to add to his growing collection. Indelible: Historic African-American Photographs and Artifacts... Read more about this event >>

Cole Porter's delirious musical Anything Goes takes a young heiress trapped in an engagement of convenience, a lovestruck young stockbroker, a second-rate criminal and his moll and an English nobleman, and throws them all on an ocean liner heading to England. There's also a reformed revivalist who now works as a nightclub singer, and she gets into as much trouble as the rest of them.... Read more about this event >>

What do you get when four Canadians and one founding member of Sonic Youth collaborate? Not your average cuppa tea. Instead, you take a long, cool drink of something from the Dadaist bottle via the art film Une Danse des Bouffons. Directed by Canadian-born Marcel Dzama, it stars Kim Gordon, who not only played bass in Sonic Youth forever but is also a respected visual artist in her own right.... Read more about this event >>

The Saint Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072 or www.slam.org) celebrates the rich artistic heritage of West Africa with Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa, a new retrospective featuring more than 170 works of art on loan from museums and private collections from around the world. This first contemporary exhibition of Senufo artwork in North America explores how the figures, masks and... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

Fashions in art, like fashions in anything, are fickle -- so it's usually best to pay them no mind. For instance, in John Constable's lifetime he was openly ridiculed for the perceived aesthetic faux pas of painting humble rural scenes. A similar dismal misapprehension of real talent befell Thomas Cole, titan of unrepentant landscape studies and the founder of the Hudson River School. Thomas... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

The 1987 film Masters of the Universe, based on the popular line of Mattel toys, stars muscle man Dolph Lundgren as He-Man, an alpha male warrior with one powerful sword. An over-the-top Frank Langella plays the deliciously despotic Skeletor, who seizes the planet Eternia and its mystical fortress, Castle Grayskull, in a dastardly scheme to become ruler of the Universe. Things get weird when... Read more about this event >>

Who doesn't love a road trip? Sometimes you have to climb out of the ditch of the stifling same-old-same-old and into new scenery, new and reinvigorating states of mind. So, say you want to drive from Missouri to Oregon's Willamette Valley. That 2,000-plus-mile trek on smooth interstates will be long but mainly free of lethal hazards, and comfortable too. Now imagine making that journey via... Read more about this event >>

Fashions in art, like fashions in anything, are fickle -- so it's usually best to pay them no mind. For instance, in John Constable's lifetime he was openly ridiculed for the perceived aesthetic faux pas of painting humble rural scenes. A similar dismal misapprehension of real talent befell Thomas Cole, titan of unrepentant landscape studies and the founder of the Hudson River School. Thomas... Read more about this event >>

World War II wasn't an off-to-the-margins conflict that affected primarily young working-class men and women. This blowup was colossal. Besides the terror of actual combat, there were hours of stultifying, anxious downtime. What to do with all those empty hours in the pre-TV, pre-Internet age? The soldier's friend, chess, filled the need. A new exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame (4652... Read more about this event >>

To walk into the Hideaway is to enter a place that seems frozen in time, where the dozen or so seats around the piano are packed with your grandparents' friends, decked out in chunky jewelry and tilted fedora hats. Ostensibly, they're here to listen to Mark Dew play — he's here Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights — but you're just as likely to hear one of those... Read more about this event >>

Cole Porter's delirious musical Anything Goes takes a young heiress trapped in an engagement of convenience, a lovestruck young stockbroker, a second-rate criminal and his moll and an English nobleman, and throws them all on an ocean liner heading to England. There's also a reformed revivalist who now works as a nightclub singer, and she gets into as much trouble as the rest of them.... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

In 1989, following the incredible success of the Dragon Ball manga and anime, series creator Akira Toriyama chose to title the sequel series Dragon Ball Z. Fearing that he was running out of ideas, Toriyama added the last letter of the alphabet to signify that the end was near. But more than a quarter of a century later, the Dragon Ball saga still shows no signs of slowing down. And how could... Read more about this event >>

The camera may have democratized photography by bringing the power of portraiture to the people, but because of America's troubling racial history there are comparatively few historical photographs of minorities. But that doesn't mean they're not out there -- artist Robert E. Green seeks them out to add to his growing collection. Indelible: Historic African-American Photographs and Artifacts... Read more about this event >>

The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries' long-standing reputation for championing the visual and performing arts in St. Louis has prompted an awe-inspiring donation -- a treasure trove of more than 2,500 exotic jazz, folk, ceremonial and indigenous musical instruments, including bizarre hybrids such as the Saxotrumpet and a must-be-seen-to-be-believed soprano slide saxophone. The Sheldon... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

The creative staff at the Muny take their responsibilities as stewards for the future of theater in St. Louis seriously -- the "family show" in every year's schedule is proof of that. This year's show for the kids is the always-popular Disney's Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1991 animated film. The music by Alan Menken and Tim Rice is beloved by children, so you already know your kids... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

If the woman in the film Face in the Crowd looks uncannily like Elizabeth Banks, you're not losing your mind. Video artist Alex Prager often recruits professional actors for her projects, and that is indeed Banks dressed in 1950s garb and wading into a crowd of people. The eleven minute long, single-channel film begins with Banks watching a thick crowd of people from her window, and then... Read more about this event >>

With the precision of an expert toymaker and the innovation of a true artist, Alexander Calder created large-scale mobiles that introduced kinetics to the world of sculpture. The artist, who adored both abstraction and verisimilitude, receives a beautiful exhibition in Calder Lightness. The show takes full advantage of the gorgeous natural light that streams into the Pulitzer Arts... Read more about this event >>

What do you get when four Canadians and one founding member of Sonic Youth collaborate? Not your average cuppa tea. Instead, you take a long, cool drink of something from the Dadaist bottle via the art film Une Danse des Bouffons. Directed by Canadian-born Marcel Dzama, it stars Kim Gordon, who not only played bass in Sonic Youth forever but is also a respected visual artist in her own right.... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

The Saint Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072 or www.slam.org) celebrates the rich artistic heritage of West Africa with Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa, a new retrospective featuring more than 170 works of art on loan from museums and private collections from around the world. This first contemporary exhibition of Senufo artwork in North America explores how the figures, masks and... Read more about this event >>

The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries' long-standing reputation for championing the visual and performing arts in St. Louis has prompted an awe-inspiring donation -- a treasure trove of more than 2,500 exotic jazz, folk, ceremonial and indigenous musical instruments, including bizarre hybrids such as the Saxotrumpet and a must-be-seen-to-be-believed soprano slide saxophone. The Sheldon... Read more about this event >>

With the precision of an expert toymaker and the innovation of a true artist, Alexander Calder created large-scale mobiles that introduced kinetics to the world of sculpture. The artist, who adored both abstraction and verisimilitude, receives a beautiful exhibition in Calder Lightness. The show takes full advantage of the gorgeous natural light that streams into the Pulitzer Arts... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

The creative staff at the Muny take their responsibilities as stewards for the future of theater in St. Louis seriously -- the "family show" in every year's schedule is proof of that. This year's show for the kids is the always-popular Disney's Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1991 animated film. The music by Alan Menken and Tim Rice is beloved by children, so you already know your kids... Read more about this event >>

The Saint Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072 or www.slam.org) celebrates the rich artistic heritage of West Africa with Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa, a new retrospective featuring more than 170 works of art on loan from museums and private collections from around the world. This first contemporary exhibition of Senufo artwork in North America explores how the figures, masks and... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

Cole Porter's delirious musical Anything Goes takes a young heiress trapped in an engagement of convenience, a lovestruck young stockbroker, a second-rate criminal and his moll and an English nobleman, and throws them all on an ocean liner heading to England. There's also a reformed revivalist who now works as a nightclub singer, and she gets into as much trouble as the rest of them.... Read more about this event >>

The camera may have democratized photography by bringing the power of portraiture to the people, but because of America's troubling racial history there are comparatively few historical photographs of minorities. But that doesn't mean they're not out there -- artist Robert E. Green seeks them out to add to his growing collection. Indelible: Historic African-American Photographs and Artifacts... Read more about this event >>

If the woman in the film Face in the Crowd looks uncannily like Elizabeth Banks, you're not losing your mind. Video artist Alex Prager often recruits professional actors for her projects, and that is indeed Banks dressed in 1950s garb and wading into a crowd of people. The eleven minute long, single-channel film begins with Banks watching a thick crowd of people from her window, and then... Read more about this event >>

World War II wasn't an off-to-the-margins conflict that affected primarily young working-class men and women. This blowup was colossal. Besides the terror of actual combat, there were hours of stultifying, anxious downtime. What to do with all those empty hours in the pre-TV, pre-Internet age? The soldier's friend, chess, filled the need. A new exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame (4652... Read more about this event >>

Fashions in art, like fashions in anything, are fickle -- so it's usually best to pay them no mind. For instance, in John Constable's lifetime he was openly ridiculed for the perceived aesthetic faux pas of painting humble rural scenes. A similar dismal misapprehension of real talent befell Thomas Cole, titan of unrepentant landscape studies and the founder of the Hudson River School. Thomas... Read more about this event >>

What do you get when four Canadians and one founding member of Sonic Youth collaborate? Not your average cuppa tea. Instead, you take a long, cool drink of something from the Dadaist bottle via the art film Une Danse des Bouffons. Directed by Canadian-born Marcel Dzama, it stars Kim Gordon, who not only played bass in Sonic Youth forever but is also a respected visual artist in her own right.... Read more about this event >>

Henrik Ibsen's classic drama Hedda Gabler ends with its heroine shooting herself. Jeff Whitty's The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler picks up immediately after the fatal gunshot. Hedda wakes up, and discovers she's doomed to exist eternally only as a tragic literary figure. Fortunately, she's not alone. Mammy, the black stereotype of a domestic servant created during Hollywood's golden age,... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

The creative staff at the Muny take their responsibilities as stewards for the future of theater in St. Louis seriously -- the "family show" in every year's schedule is proof of that. This year's show for the kids is the always-popular Disney's Beauty and the Beast, based on the 1991 animated film. The music by Alan Menken and Tim Rice is beloved by children, so you already know your kids... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto comes from the late-middle period of the composer's productive life, when he was incorporating more realism in his operas. The title character is a hunchbacked jester who serves the Duke of Mantua. The Duke is a rapacious despoiler of women, a hobby that Rigoletto underscores by openly mocking the husbands of the Duke's conquests. One of those cuckolded husbands... Read more about this event >>

The Sheldon Concert Hall and Art Galleries' long-standing reputation for championing the visual and performing arts in St. Louis has prompted an awe-inspiring donation -- a treasure trove of more than 2,500 exotic jazz, folk, ceremonial and indigenous musical instruments, including bizarre hybrids such as the Saxotrumpet and a must-be-seen-to-be-believed soprano slide saxophone. The Sheldon... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

Cole Porter's delirious musical Anything Goes takes a young heiress trapped in an engagement of convenience, a lovestruck young stockbroker, a second-rate criminal and his moll and an English nobleman, and throws them all on an ocean liner heading to England. There's also a reformed revivalist who now works as a nightclub singer, and she gets into as much trouble as the rest of them.... Read more about this event >>

To walk into the Hideaway is to enter a place that seems frozen in time, where the dozen or so seats around the piano are packed with your grandparents' friends, decked out in chunky jewelry and tilted fedora hats. Ostensibly, they're here to listen to Mark Dew play — he's here Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights — but you're just as likely to hear one of those... Read more about this event >>

What do you get when four Canadians and one founding member of Sonic Youth collaborate? Not your average cuppa tea. Instead, you take a long, cool drink of something from the Dadaist bottle via the art film Une Danse des Bouffons. Directed by Canadian-born Marcel Dzama, it stars Kim Gordon, who not only played bass in Sonic Youth forever but is also a respected visual artist in her own right.... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

With the precision of an expert toymaker and the innovation of a true artist, Alexander Calder created large-scale mobiles that introduced kinetics to the world of sculpture. The artist, who adored both abstraction and verisimilitude, receives a beautiful exhibition in Calder Lightness. The show takes full advantage of the gorgeous natural light that streams into the Pulitzer Arts... Read more about this event >>

The camera may have democratized photography by bringing the power of portraiture to the people, but because of America's troubling racial history there are comparatively few historical photographs of minorities. But that doesn't mean they're not out there -- artist Robert E. Green seeks them out to add to his growing collection. Indelible: Historic African-American Photographs and Artifacts... Read more about this event >>

World War II wasn't an off-to-the-margins conflict that affected primarily young working-class men and women. This blowup was colossal. Besides the terror of actual combat, there were hours of stultifying, anxious downtime. What to do with all those empty hours in the pre-TV, pre-Internet age? The soldier's friend, chess, filled the need. A new exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame (4652... Read more about this event >>

If the woman in the film Face in the Crowd looks uncannily like Elizabeth Banks, you're not losing your mind. Video artist Alex Prager often recruits professional actors for her projects, and that is indeed Banks dressed in 1950s garb and wading into a crowd of people. The eleven minute long, single-channel film begins with Banks watching a thick crowd of people from her window, and then... Read more about this event >>

Henrik Ibsen's classic drama Hedda Gabler ends with its heroine shooting herself. Jeff Whitty's The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler picks up immediately after the fatal gunshot. Hedda wakes up, and discovers she's doomed to exist eternally only as a tragic literary figure. Fortunately, she's not alone. Mammy, the black stereotype of a domestic servant created during Hollywood's golden age,... Read more about this event >>

World War II wasn't an off-to-the-margins conflict that affected primarily young working-class men and women. This blowup was colossal. Besides the terror of actual combat, there were hours of stultifying, anxious downtime. What to do with all those empty hours in the pre-TV, pre-Internet age? The soldier's friend, chess, filled the need. A new exhibit at the World Chess Hall of Fame (4652... Read more about this event >>

Cole Porter's delirious musical Anything Goes takes a young heiress trapped in an engagement of convenience, a lovestruck young stockbroker, a second-rate criminal and his moll and an English nobleman, and throws them all on an ocean liner heading to England. There's also a reformed revivalist who now works as a nightclub singer, and she gets into as much trouble as the rest of them.... Read more about this event >>

The dome of the St. Louis Science Center's OMNIMAX theater is five stories high and 79 feet in diameter -- that's a great deal of space to fill with images. But a full-grown humpback whale is 50 feet long and weighs 48 tons, so they'll use all of it. Humpback Whales, the new IMAX film from MacGillivray Freeman Films, takes you undersea from Alaska to Hawaii to Tonga as you swim with these... Read more about this event >>

Hollywood meets hi-tech at the Saint Louis Science Center's new exhibition, Alien Worlds and Androids. Visitors discover what extraterrestrial life may be like through the use of advanced laboratories, telescopes, robots and probes. Nine themed areas demonstrate how new technologies are being implemented to discover if we are alone in the universe. A Mars rover simulator journeys to the Red... Read more about this event >>

Cartography is not considered a fine-art form, but it should be. Because of its association with practical utility and the accurate visual translation of purely physical information, cartography tends to get short shrift in aesthetic circles -- if indeed it gets any shrift at all. Such, perhaps, is the price of overvaluing the romantic abstract at the expense of the quotidian tangible.... Read more about this event >>

To walk into the Hideaway is to enter a place that seems frozen in time, where the dozen or so seats around the piano are packed with your grandparents' friends, decked out in chunky jewelry and tilted fedora hats. Ostensibly, they're here to listen to Mark Dew play — he's here Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights — but you're just as likely to hear one of those... Read more about this event >>

The final frontier is a little bit closer to home with Journey to Space. Patrick Stewart narrates this IMAX film that chronicles our achievement in exploring the universe, including the Space Shuttle programs and the International Space Station. Although it won't be easy, space is the place for preparing our future, one in which humans live, work and advance scientific study off-planet.... Read more about this event >>

The Saint Louis Art Museum (314-721-0072 or www.slam.org) celebrates the rich artistic heritage of West Africa with Senufo: Art and Identity in West Africa, a new retrospective featuring more than 170 works of art on loan from museums and private collections from around the world. This first contemporary exhibition of Senufo artwork in North America explores how the figures, masks and... Read more about this event >>

Of all the weapons Adolf Hitler wielded during the Second World War, none was more powerful than his propaganda machine. The Missouri History Museum's new exhibit, State of Deception: The Power of Nazi Propaganda, examines how Hitler and his cronies used propaganda to seize and maintain power from Germany's young democracy by appealing to the common people, ultimately popularizing total war... Read more about this event >>

If the woman in the film Face in the Crowd looks uncannily like Elizabeth Banks, you're not losing your mind. Video artist Alex Prager often recruits professional actors for her projects, and that is indeed Banks dressed in 1950s garb and wading into a crowd of people. The eleven minute long, single-channel film begins with Banks watching a thick crowd of people from her window, and then... Read more about this event >>

With the precision of an expert toymaker and the innovation of a true artist, Alexander Calder created large-scale mobiles that introduced kinetics to the world of sculpture. The artist, who adored both abstraction and verisimilitude, receives a beautiful exhibition in Calder Lightness. The show takes full advantage of the gorgeous natural light that streams into the Pulitzer Arts... Read more about this event >>

What do you get when four Canadians and one founding member of Sonic Youth collaborate? Not your average cuppa tea. Instead, you take a long, cool drink of something from the Dadaist bottle via the art film Une Danse des Bouffons. Directed by Canadian-born Marcel Dzama, it stars Kim Gordon, who not only played bass in Sonic Youth forever but is also a respected visual artist in her own right.... Read more about this event >>

Henrik Ibsen's classic drama Hedda Gabler ends with its heroine shooting herself. Jeff Whitty's The Further Adventures of Hedda Gabler picks up immediately after the fatal gunshot. Hedda wakes up, and discovers she's doomed to exist eternally only as a tragic literary figure. Fortunately, she's not alone. Mammy, the black stereotype of a domestic servant created during Hollywood's golden age,... Read more about this event >>

Fashions in art, like fashions in anything, are fickle -- so it's usually best to pay them no mind. For instance, in John Constable's lifetime he was openly ridiculed for the perceived aesthetic faux pas of painting humble rural scenes. A similar dismal misapprehension of real talent befell Thomas Cole, titan of unrepentant landscape studies and the founder of the Hudson River School. Thomas... Read more about this event >>

Giuseppe Verdi's Rigoletto comes from the late-middle period of the composer's productive life, when he was incorporating more realism in his operas. The title character is a hunchbacked jester who serves the Duke of Mantua. The Duke is a rapacious despoiler of women, a hobby that Rigoletto underscores by openly mocking the husbands of the Duke's conquests. One of those cuckolded husbands... Read more about this event >>